COMMISSION on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Erwin Garcia said the Comelec is keen on leasing election machines instead of buying new ones.
Garcia told The Manila Times on Friday that the Comelec has already started looking for suppliers even if the budget for the project has not yet been approved.
Chairman Erwin Garcia PHOTO BY J. GERARD SEGUIA
Chairman Erwin Garcia PHOTO BY J. GERARD SEGUIA
He said the Comelec requires specific innovations to solve problems experienced in past elections, including a 13-inch screen that will allow the voter to see the ballot’s image front and back.
“Of course, when the ballot is fed into the machine, a receipt will still be printed,” Garcia said.
Other technical requirements include a speed of 220 millimeters per second instead of 70 millimeters per second, automatic insertion alignment of the ballot and a receipt with QR code to hasten the computation of the total ballots cast.
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The machines must be capable of transmitting election results not only to government canvassers but to independent observers as well, thus eliminating the need for transparency servers.
“It will be transmitting the election results to the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections, Kapisanan ng mga Broadkaster ng Pilipinas, the majority and the minority parties, Congress and the Comelec all at the same time. This allows these organizations to compare among themselves the data that was transmitted,” Garcia said, noting this kind of setup will be done for the first time in the history of automated elections in the Philippines.
The poll body also required a “hybrid” feature for the machines, allowing both manual and automatic operations.
Garcia said that the budget proposal for the poll machines was reduced from P28 billion to P22 billion, which he said could result in a reduction in the number of poll precincts.
“We were predicting 128,000 precincts, but because of a reduced budget, the number of precincts would be reduced to 110,000 with 1,000 voters per precinct. That is the consequence of a reduced budget,” he added.
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